Using Confidence To Overcome Obstacles

Confidence Can Guide You Through Hard Times

Life isn’t always easy. In fact, there are a lot of times in life where it can feel like the obstacles standing in front of us are overwhelming.

Some people are able to push through the obstacles in their way and some people tend to find themselves lost without a clue of how to overcome the adversity that stands before them. The difference between these two different types of people is the amount of confidence they have.

With confidence, the possibilities in life can be endless. On the other hand, without confidence, even the smallest of tasks can feel next to impossible to complete.

I can remember many times in my life that a lack of confidence made things a lot harder than they needed to be. Unfortunately, I allowed this lack of confidence to hold me back for many years. Often, when presented with a challenge, I found any way I could to back out of it.

This was the result of my fear of failure. I used to have a hard time believing in myself and my abilities. For this reason, the best route to take usually seemed to be not trying at all instead of risking a failure and embarrassing myself.

Needless to say, this did nothing to help me in life. I was stuck in the same position for many years and used to wonder why I couldn’t ever get ahead.

My Self-Belief Lacked And So Did My Success

Others would try to get me to believe in myself but my confidence was so damaged that they might as well have been trying to reason with a wall. Basically, the positive things that people would say about me would simply go in one eat and right out the other.

Eventually, I dug a hole so deep in my life that it seemed like I would never be able to get back out. A sad but true fact is that many people have to hit rock bottom before they make the decision to improve their life. I was one of these people.

Years went by and things didn’t change. I would look around at the people who were my age and I would notice that they had things going for themselves. However, there I was, still doing nothing with my life.

This was often a painful experience, especially when it came to the fact that many of my childhood friends had families, their own houses and basically everything else that creates what most would consider to be a successful life.

My friends would often ask me, “Why aren’t you doing anything with your life?” Some of my friends even began to distance themselves from me out of fear of me dragging them down into the pit I had created for myself.

I completely understood where they were coming from. I was never mad at them for their actions of jealous of the life they had. In fact, I was quite happy that they were able to get such a great start to their adulthood. However, I couldn’t help but to feel sad when I would think about how successful they were becoming while I was still doing nothing with myself.

This went on for quite some time and it began to give me a negative view of the world. In all honesty, I thought I was doomed to be a failure and I felt as if there was nothing I could do to change it.

The worse part would be the fact that the longer this went on, the more damaged my confidence became. The more damaged my confidence became, the harder life was for me. This basically created a vicious cycle that dragged me further and further down.

I finally got to the point that I decided enough was enough. I no longer wanted to merely exist but rather thrive in life and make something of myself.

It was this decision that set me on a path to discovering the core of my problems which happened to be a lack of confidence. I finally had a reason why and could begin figuring out a way to make it better.

Sterling McCartney is a partner at Science of Imagery. Sterling has the unique ability to turn adversity into triumph and his goal is to share his talent with others. To teach other people to live the best life they can and to teach them good personal development habits. It is his desire to make the world a better place by paying it forward and teaching others to be able to do the same.

1 Comment

Lisa Herman

08/02/2017

Sterling, that was an enlightening story. You are very courageous, honest and brave. Thank you for always sharing your wisdom and your heart with me. Thank you for being on my journey with me. Thank you ALL, MY SUPERHEROES OF SANITY , LOVE YOU BUNCHES